Re:$30M Raised to Redo the CPU
by Animats on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @01:18PM
(#50456596)
Yes.
The idea of the Cell architecture is that programs were supposed to be organized as an assembly line, with data flowing into a processor in a stream, and coming out the other side after processing. That's a good fit to audio processing.
Each of the seven support processors had only 256KB (not MB) of local RAM, plus a wide long-latency path to the 256MB main memory, the other support processors, and the PowerPC CPU.
That 256KB was the problem. Not enough for a frame. Not enough for a level. Not enough for AAA title games.
That's the problem with the lots of little processors approach. If all the little guys are memory-starved, you can't get much done, except on very regular problems.
Finite element analysis and neural nets are the big wins for such architectures.
They're not general purpose.
Note that GPUs aren't arrays of isolated CPUs. All units work against the same memory, mostly. They're closer to shared memory multiprocessors.
The idea of the Cell architecture is that programs were supposed to be organized as an assembly line, with data flowing into a processor in a stream, and coming out the other side after processing. That's a good fit to audio processing.
Each of the seven support processors had only 256KB (not MB) of local RAM, plus a wide long-latency path to the 256MB main memory, the other support processors, and the PowerPC CPU.
That 256KB was the problem. Not enough for a frame. Not enough for a level. Not enough for AAA title games.
That's the problem with the lots of little processors approach. If all the little guys are memory-starved, you can't get much done, except on very regular problems. Finite element analysis and neural nets are the big wins for such architectures. They're not general purpose.
Note that GPUs aren't arrays of isolated CPUs. All units work against the same memory, mostly. They're closer to shared memory multiprocessors.